Left Targets Cuomo In Last-Ditch Minimum Wage Push

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who arguably was the left’s last best hope to push for passage of a minimum wage increase, admitted not long ago that the measure he first called for back on State of the State day is not going to pass before lawmakers leave Albany this week.

Silver predicted the Senate Republicans will return to Albany prior to the November elections and pass a minimum wage bill, but there has been no real talk of that on the other side of the aisle so far.

But liberal advocates haven’t given up hope yet. They’re urging supporters to flood Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office with a barrage of last-minute emails and calls, hoping to pressure him into calling on the Senate to hold and up or down vote on the Assembly bill.

According to a source familiar with this effort, a total of 500,000 New Yorkers have received emails from national groups including MoveOn.org, CREDO and Momsrising – all of which include links to either sign an on-line petition or make a call to the governor.

CREDO has sent several previous emails prior to this one, I’m told. The MoveOn action is new; here’s the text:

Dear New York MoveOn member,

My name is Myrna, and I’m from Kingston, New York. I am a low-wage worker, making just over the minimum wage—and it’s impossible to make ends meet. I wait until 5pm to go grocery shopping, because I can get bread at a discount. I just hope I can provide a better future for my daughter.

The minimum wage in New York is just $7.25/hr. That’s just over $15,000 a year. That’s a poverty wage, and no family in New York should have to survive on it.

My family, like hundreds of thousands of low wage workers across New York, deserves a raise. And Governor Cuomo has proved he can get his priorities done in Albany. For example, when gambling bigwigs showed up with big contributions for the Committee to Save New York, Gov. Cuomo listened.

Low-wage families don’t have millions of dollars, but we need Governor Cuomo’s help too. That’s why I started a petition to Governor Cuomo on SignOn.org, which says:

Will you sign the petition? Click here to add your name, and then pass it along to your friends…

Thanks!
Myrna Capaldi

Now, even if the Senate were to take up this issue, it’s a safe bet it would not even consider the Assembly legislation, which immediately hikes the $7.25-an-hour rate to $8.50 and then indexes the rate, insuring it will go up as the cost of living does. If the Senate passes anything, it would not including indexing and would likely phase in an increase over several years – as it has done in the past.

Cuomo has come under pressure from the left before – most notably on reinstating the so-called millionaire’s tax. He ended up pushing an overhaul of the tax code through the Legislature, which raised taxes on the rich, but at a rate less than what they would have seen had the temporary PIT surcharge passed three years earlier been allowed to remain in place.

The governor has tangled with public employee unions and championed a number of fiscally conservative policies, including creation of a sixth pension tier and a property tax cap. He has sought to offset this approach with a socially liberal agenda that includes same-sex marriage and decriminalization of possession of small amounts of pot.

If Cuomo does indeed have White House aspirations, he’s likely going to need to appeal to the liberal base – most notably organized labor – to win a Democratic primary. He could continue with his current approach, which is to pit the trades and the progressives against one another, but that’s kind of a risky strategy. Thankfully for him, there’s a lot of time between now and 2016 to make amends.